AI tokens face downturn, but Bittensor (TAO) grows amid expanding ecosystem and rising demand.
TL;DR…
- AI Market Overview: AI tokens face a downturn like the broader crypto market; 8 of the top 10 are in the red, though the total market cap remains steady.
- Top Performers: Bittensor (TAO), Turbo (TURBO), and others defy trends, showing gains between 1.3% to 39.7% this week.
- Significant Developments: Meta reveals AI-generated video tech; 0G Labs launches decentralized AI OS; Synnax raises $550K for crypto AI project.
- Bittensor’s Rise: Layer-1 AI platform sees growth in subnets and accounts; high subnet fees and TAO token model drive demand.
The crypto market has been topsy-turvy for the last week, with most coins showing increased volatility owed to neutral/slightly fearful sentiment.
But how have AI tokens fared in this time? Let’s a look-see and find out.
Did you miss last week’s update? Check it out here.
AI Market Movements
Like the rest of the crypto market, the AI sector isn’t looking too hot right now. 8 of the top 10 largest AI tokens by market capitalization are in the red over the last 7 days, but the total market cap of AI tokens is roughly flat over this period.
Source: AI & Big Data Tokens Page
A handful of AI tokens managed to resist the broader market downturn and stay in the green over the last week. These include:
- Near Protocol (NEAR) — up 1.8%
- Bittensor (TAO) — up 9.7%
- The Graph (GRT) — up 1.3%
- DeXe (DEXE) — up 6%
- io.net (IO) — up 5.3%
Perhaps unsurprisingly, this week’s best-performing AI token is actually a meme coin known as Turbo (TURBO). Billed as a “memecoin made by AI for the people", Turbo has tacked on an impressive 39.7% in the last week — continuing more than a month of solid growth.
Source: Turbo Coin Page
Interested in meme coins? Check out our weekly Meme Coin roundup.
Overall, the AI sector showed some resilience in the past week. According to DeFiLlama's narrative tracker, it's outperforming the market average with a 3.2% mcap-weighted return over the last week.
For comparison, PolitiFi tokens gained 40.9%, Meme Coins gained 17.9% and Data Availability tokens gained 5.8% in mcap-weighted returns over the same period.
Weekly News Roundup
As one of the most rapidly expanding sectors, the AI space is always chock full of updates, news, developments and recent breakthroughs.
To help you catch up quickly, we’ve sorted through these to bring you only the most important stories:
Meta demonstrates photorealistic AI-generated video: In a recent blog post, Meta unveiled Movie Gen, a text-to-media AI model that allows users to create realistic videos and sound effects via text inputs. Some of the initial (albeit likely cherry-picked) results are quite impressive.
0G Labs introduces the "world's first" decentralized AI Operating System (dAIOS): 0G (Zero Gravity) has expanded the scope of its product from a modular AI blockchain to a complete blockchain-based OS. This OS will manage a variety of decentralized hardware resources and allow for truly decentralized AI applications.
SightAI announces incentivized community engagement program: SightAI, a platform that provides secure decentralized computation with fully homomorphic encryption, has announced an airdrop for users who complete various activities on the Ethereum Holesky testnet.
Synnax Technology secures $550k in strategic funding round: Decentralized credit intelligence platform, Synnax, has raised $550,000 in a strategic funding round — with participation from Wintermute Ventures and TON Ventures.
AI pioneers win Nobel Prize: The 2023 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz, and Anne L’Huillier for their work on attosecond light pulses, enabling rapid electron studies. This breakthrough could accelerate AI development by advancing computing and materials, potentially boosting AI’s speed and efficiency. Meanwhile, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to the developers of an AI-powered protein folding model.
Theoriq launches its testnet: Theoriq has launched an incentivized testnet for its blockchain-based AI agent network, which allows autonomous agents to collaborate on complex tasks. This test phase will refine AI capabilities ahead of its planned mainnet launch later this year.
Why Is Bittensor Pumping?
Widely acknowledged as the leading pure-play layer-1 for artificial intelligence applications, Bittensor has put on an impressive display in recent weeks after more than doubling from its local bottom last month.
The eagle-eyed among our readers might have noticed that it’s also growing fast in several other key metrics, these include:
- Subnet count: There are now more than 50 subnets live on Bittensor. 8 of these went live in the last month alone.
- Number of accounts: The number of Bittensor accounts has been growing at a steady pace since tracking began in August. At current rates of growth, 15,000 new accounts are being added each month.
This steady growth represents adoption among both developers and end-users, boding well for the future of the network.
Another reason behind Bittensor’s growth is its incentive structure. Popular subnets earn a fraction of the newly emitted TAO, helping to encourage the growth of useful subnets, while ensuring developers can be directly rewarded for contributing valuable products to the network.
There is also a steep (and growing) subnet registration cost, helping to discourage spamming through the creation of meaningless subnets that provide no value. Right now, it costs a whopping 2,630 TAO (~$1.57 million) to register a subnet — a number that has been steadily increasing since its launch due to competition among developers.
Source: taostats
Meanwhile, the TAO token features a fair distribution model, whereby newly released TAO tokens are shared fairly among stakeholders, including validators (and TAO stakers), miners, and the treasury.
Together, this system has created a perfect storm for growth, which has been represented by the increased demand for and value of the $TAO token.
And that’s a wrap! Catch you here next week for another AI roundup.
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